Otherwise it is merely wires and lights in a box. Good night, and good luck.

President Barack Obama.

I still get excited just thinking about it.  However, as with any election, there are people whose enthusiasm for the new leader is not quite as high as mine.  In fact, based on the facebook statuses and blog comments and stories I've heard, there are actually some people who are genuinely upset about the Tuesdays results.  (Nearly incomprehensible I know, but bear with me).

Because very few of those who have such feelings of animosity and outrage at our soon to be Commander in Chief will read this (I'm guessing...0 people), I instead write this blog as a service to those of you who will almost certainly be faced with awkward interactions that involve all the reasons why they are certain the United States is well and truly fucked.  

First of all, I think it is relevant to remind them of what John McCain himself said:

I urge all Americans ... I urge all Americans who supported me to join me in not just congratulating him, but offering our next president our good will and earnest effort to find ways to come together to find the necessary compromises to bridge our differences and help restore our prosperity, defend our security in a dangerous world, and leave our children and grandchildren a stronger, better country than we inherited.

Now is not the time for extreme partisanship.  Now is not the time for nay saying.  Now is not the time to despair.  We need to let everyone know that now is the time to stand together as Americans, as humans, as living beings.  Now is the time for unity.  

As Lincoln said to a nation far more divided than ours, we are not enemies but friends. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection.
And to those Americans whose support I have yet to earn, I may not have won your vote tonight, but I hear your voices. I need your help. And I will be your president, too.

It is also important to point out that America is not doomed.  We survived eight years of George Bush, we can survive four years of anything (except maybe four years of a Vice President who doesn't know that Africa is a continent...).  Inform them that you understand how they're feeling, that you felt it four years ago, and four years before that.  Remind them that every election there is the feeling that if your candidate did not win then the United States is going to fall (to communism,  socialism, hedonism, terrorism, or some other 'ism), and so far we still seem to be here.

Then will very likely come the (bat shit fucking insane) accusations about Obama and his character, here are a few of the ones you're more likely to come across

1. Barack Obama is a socialist, and this country is not about socialism dammit!
2. He is a terrorist and a lover of terrorists and he wants the terrorists to win. (terrorz!)
3. He is going to take my money and give it to people who don't even work. (Same as #1, but likely brought up as a different point)
4. He is going to socialize healthcare! (Same as #1, but likely brought up as a different point)
5. He will raise my taxes and ruin the economy. (Same as #1...starting to sense a pattern...)

There might be some other primary ones that I am forgetting, and I'm sure there are some creative ones that I still haven't heard.  If you hear any of these accusations, there are calm and clear responses that would, in a perfect world, placate the person you are discussing this with.  (Of course, life experience has shown me that people are anything but rational when it comes to actually discussing politics (and religion)).

First and foremost, Barack Obama is not a socialist.  He's not even close to actually being a socialist.  Canadians and Europeans are all probably having a good laugh at our ignorance, since they actually know what socialism is.  Feel free to explain to the person you're talking to that countries who embrace a higher level of socialism almost all enjoy a higher standard of living than Americans.  They have better education and healthcare.  They have not been conquered by horrible dictators.  The only reason their economies are currently having trouble is because our economy is so fucking terrible right now.  

But that is neither here nor there, Obama is not a socialist. Period.  End of Story.  And if the person you're talking to hates socialism so much, perhaps you could also point out they should stop taking advantage of road service, public schools, police, fire departments, sanitation control, and any other slew of industries that we pay for with our tax dollars (SOCIALIST ORGANIZATIONS!!!!).

The terrorist argument is hard to diffuse, because it is born of intentional ignorance.  Despite there being no evidence that Obama has anything but contempt for those who would use acts of terror against innocent people, despite his condemnations of all acts of terrorism, this rumor persists.  You can try to explain this, but some people just want to cling to their lies.

The last three reasons I had were somewhat of a joke, but it is surprising how many people argue these points after the socialism argument (probably because those same people have no idea what the fuck socialism is, they just assume it is something terrible).

I think the key to all of these responses is to stay calm.  Be the bigger person in the debate, and don't get mad, even if they're being ignorant and intolerant.  If they want to start yelling, or make wild accusations, I find an appropriate first response is nothing.  Let them finish, and then just stare for a second.  Then very calmly refute their points.  Shouting matches will accomplish nothing and only vindicates their viewpoint in their minds (and does not help us bridge the gaps that we must in order to fix our country).

We need cool heads and calm minds in the months ahead.  We face many problems, and there are obstacles in our way.  It will not be easy, but it is necessary, and we cannot do it divided.  So I urge you to reach out.  Take the time and engage in rational discourse with those who you know disagree.  Do what you can to assure the depressed McCain supporter that we are on the road to the America of legend.  You will not always succeed, but if you can change even one mind, then you have taken a great step towards rebuilding our great nation.

Hail to the chief, if you don't, I'll have to kill you. I am the chief, so you better watch your step, you bastards.

John McCain is kind of a dick (I mean...maverick).

I will ignore (for now) the vast number of very negative ads that have already run.  Both parties are guilty of running negative ads at some time or other (although a decent number of polls would indicate McCain's was in general felt to be more negative, and non-partisan fact checkers tend to find his ads the least correct).  But John McCain's most recent use of robo-calls is crossing the line from standard negative politics to outright ass-hattery.  

This is the same shit that he condemned in 2000 when George W. Bush used it against him, and now he's even hired the same people the Geedub did to do the same fucking thing to Barack Obama.  (Irony for making Bush comparisons more valid, lulz).  And he is completely unashamed to admit to it, and even defend it.

I am mildly amused (enraged and on the verge of an aneurysm) at the way he tries to paint Obama as the negative asshole, by talking about the money Obama has spent on negative ads (which skews the facts since Obama has spent crazy amounts of funding on all kinds of ads the percentage of negativity may or may not be at record numbers), but 66% of Americans think McCain is running a mostly negative campaign compared to 33% who think that of Obama so if he is spending record amounts at negativity he fails at it.

He also continues to cry foul on the fact that Obama hasn't denounced John Lewis' claims that the McCain/Palin campaign is sowing the seeds of hatred that brings up memories of the George Wallace Rallies back in the 60's.  The FactCheck Wire has something to say about that.

John McCain began this campaign calling for honor and dignity, and has rescinded on that promise while still trying to hold Obama to those standards and bemoaning any instance where he doesn't.  Well your hypocrisy has been noted senator McCain, and I hope very much it costs you dearly come November 4th.

More on the Robo Calls:

Part I
Part II

I may not be a man of God, Reverend, but I know right and I know wrong and I have the good grace to know which is which

I don't know if any of you were aware, but there is some kind of election coming up.  And as such, in addition to the excitement of potentially pissing off anyone around you just by bringing up the wrong candidate (seriously, some people look like they're ready to throw down if you even think about voting for the wrong guy), but we get the pleasure of a nearly nonstop stream of political ads, billboards, phone calls, emails, and who knows what other methods will be employed (I myself am following Obama on Twitter).

While the ads themselves are fairly annoying simply due to sheer volume, the worst part is that it can be rather difficult to determine whether what they say is the truth, a stretching of facts, or an outright fabrication.  It would be nice if they would tell us at the end of the ad (by the way, all of that was total bullshit) but I think that could undermine what they are trying to accomplish.

Fortunately for all of us, there are people who have decided it is a worthy cause to separate the wheat from the chaff and provide it to the masses via the interwebs.  FactCheck.org

Completely non partisan, they do fact checking on statements from ads, interviews, debates, speeches, and pretty much any other venue.  Now when different commercials say different things you can determine which (if any) are correct.  Hopefully it will help all of us survive the next two months, and prevent us from perpetuating any untruths that we may have seen on the TeeVee.

I have heard the voice of the voters and the voters said...Holy Shit!

I don't understand people.

This statement holds true a great majority of the time, but my confusion tends to grow at a geometric rate (!) when it comes to politics. If you happen to live under a rock, it is possible that you missed the nomination of Sarah Palin as John McCain's Vice President. If you're like most people your response to hearing about her nomination was probably "who?". Don't worry, it doesn't mean you're uninformed in this election, it just means you don't need to know who is governing a state with a population smaller than any given major US city. (It's barely 6 times the population of Boulder). Of course being unknown and inexperienced doesn't necessarily make her entirely unqualified (despite what the McCain campaign would have had you believe before they picked her for VP) so I was interested in learning more about who she is and what kind of candidate she would make.

I decided to check out her speech from the Republican National Convention as a starting point, to hear what she had to say with no preconceived notions. And shortly into the speech the confusion began to set in. When Hilary Clinton talks tough and has snippy comebacks she is "a bitch", but when Sarah Palin does it she "has spunk". Of course, if we want to call it having spunk, then the only things I learned from her RNC speech was that she

A)Is spunky.
B)Likes drilling. (For oil)

Her first opportunity to really address the nation, and all she has is a bunch of snide remarks belittling community organizers and people who actually care about human rights. I realize that she was probably not the one who wrote that speech, but it seems like as some point when she was practicing it she could have asked if it was necessary for her to sound like a high school girl who didn't get asked to the prom. She was unable to assuage any doubts people might have about her ability to lead, she told us almost nothing about how she feels about ANY of the issues surrounding this election, and she made no mention of the current administration's success/failures.

The other thing that she failed to address was the hypocrisy of her selection as McCain's VP, and if hypocrisy can help you win an election, then we've got another four years of Republicans in the White House coming. It starts with picking a VP who is extremely inexperienced, and seems to be more of a celebrity than politician. (I don't think Obama was ever in a beauty pageant...). How do you explain this move when your entire campaign against Obama was "Don't vote for him, he's inexperienced! He's more a celebrity than he is a Senator!"? The current strategy seems to be never mention that they said that, and don't show those commercials anymore. We also have all of the republican pundits showing nothing but sympathy and respect for her pregnant 17 year old daughter, and demanding the same of the rest of us, despite having spent all of their careers up until this point condemning teens for having sex and blaming it all on poor parenting. Sarah Palin asks us to respect her family privacy in this matter and respect her daughter's decision to keep the child when she intends to remove the right to privacy and decisions for all women and families. The Republican party claims to be concerned about the people (They're going to give us tax cuts!) but they still find time to mock community organizers. (You know, the people who help those who the government has left behind)

In addition to the raging hypocrisy (any wagers on how many times I'm going to use that word in this blog?) I have taken some time to investigate more about Sarah Palin, and what kind of Veep she would make.

Sarah Palin does not believe that humans are at all responsible for global warming, and she does not believe polar bears should be on the endangered species list. I don't think she has any scientific backing for either of these opinions, simply that they both have the potential to interfere in her love of drilling. If she does have backing she hasn't informed anybody of it. Perhaps it's hypocrisy a secret.

Sarah Palin wanted to ban certain books from her town library back when she was mayor, simply because she didn't like the ideas expressed within. If the thought of that kind of government censorship doesn't upset you then you and I will probably not agree on very many things in life.

The one that made me laugh out loud (right before I started weeping in terror): Sarah Palin never left the country before July of 2007. I cant' even comment on that. Seriously.

I think Matt Damon says it well:

"It's like a really bad Disney movie, 'The Hockey Mom.' Oh, I'm just a hockey mom from Alaska, and she's president. She's facing down Vladimir Putin and using the folksy stuff she learned at the hockey rink. It's hypocr absurd."

The prospect of Sarah Palin being our VP, and being a heart attack or a cancer relapse away from being the Commander in Chief of the United States of America is absolutely terrifying. This cannot come to pass. I urge each and every one of you do your part to save our country and vote Barack Obama in 2008.

Matt Damon on Youtube

Stop Breaking the Law, Asshole!

Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck.

There are some things that I am unable to properly quantify my feelings about. This is one of them. I know it makes me angry, but it also makes me sad, confused, and an entire array of other negative emotions.

You know, I cannot wait until next year. I can think of very few people who could possibly run this country any worse than George W. Bush. If Hitler's Ghost were running against Geedub I'd honestly have to think about it for a bit.

Seriously? I ought to THANK someone for violating the constitution and my own personal rights? I should be GLAD that things like due process are no longer a necessity for the government? I just need to take their word for it, accept their hand waving, and pay no attention to the man behind the curtain? I don't know if there are appropriate ways for me to express my absolute disgust at that notion.

Let us, for a moment, allow ourselves to be deluded into believing that giving up our civil liberties will increase our safety from terrorists. At what point do we draw the line? Is it wrong for the government to be able to enter our homes whenever they want to look for potential terrorist infestations? Maybe not physically enter but just have a nice camera system set up so they can keep good tabs on us, make sure we aren't a threat to national security. That would keep us safe, wouldn't it?

Geh, should a company that has violated law and infringed on the rights of its customers and fellow citizens have to go to the courthouse to defend itself? YES! Why is that even a question?

Beneath this mask there is an idea, Mr. Creedy, and ideas are bulletproof

This blog spawned from a book I was reading for a philosophy class.

I don't know if any of you have ever heard of a man named Randy Weaver, I know I hadn't before reading this book. I won't go into extravagant details about him, but the basic idea is that this man was kept under constant surveillance by the government for almost two years, until eventually armed marshals, who had been hiding in the woods around his house in camouflage, shot his son's dog without provocation which prompted return fire from the 14 year old boy, who was then shot in the arm. While he tried to flee back home, he was shot in the back and killed. At this point Weaver's friend began to fire on these unknown, unannounced strangers who had just shot and killed a dog and a 14 year old boy, and he actually killed one of the marshals.

Because of this, the government sent in dozens and dozens of FBI agents and snipers to surround the house. While Randy, his 12 year old daughter, and friend went out to a shack they had stored their sons body in to pay respects, the snipers shot Randy in the arm, and while attempting to run back into the house, the sniper shot his wife Vicki (who was holding their 8month old baby) through the head, killing her instantly, and the shot also went through to his friend, puncturing his lung and delivering a fatal wound.

After Randy finally surrendered, he was arrested and immediately put on trial for the murder of a federal officer. Randy, who had shot nobody. A man whose only crime was that he was maybe a member of the Aryan Nation (not actually a crime), and because of this, he was entrapped by his own government in an attempt to make him a spy on a group he did not even belong to. Simply because his religious and personal beliefs did not reflect those of the majority, his wife, son, and friend were murdered by the very men who are supposed to protect them. The media portrayed him as a skinhead, white supremacist, anti-Semitic cop killer who barely deserved a fair trial. Not only this, but the prosecution in his trial called for the death penalty.

If this does not horrify you, then perhaps I have failed to adequately relate this story, in which case I will suggest you read the book "From Freedom to Slavery" by Gerry Spence.

This book was a grim reminder that I dislike the way things are going. While I am still obviously living in a free country, as I am writing this blog without any real fear of governmental agents abducting me in the middle of the night, I don't necessarily see that as such a ridiculous notion as I once did. When I was younger I remember being told how free I was, to be living in America. Now I can have my phones tapped, my emails read, my regular mail read, my history of books that I have checked out at the library can be searched, and who knows what else. All without my knowledge, and all without reason. Sure, I have nothing to hide, but that doesn't mean that I shouldn't have the right to hide my nothing.

Unfortunately, it seems that not very many people seem to feel like I do, or care that our rights and freedoms are slowly being taken away. Or maybe they don't notice. Maybe everyone is so afraid of terrorists that they cannot be troubled to worry about whether or not they can take their finger nail clippers on the airplane with them.

And why is everyone still so afraid of the terrorists? Do they honestly think that the liberties we're giving up are making us any safer? That because my shoes get X-rayed in an airport there won't be any more violence on airplanes?

In the wake of the tragedy at Virginia Tech it seems painfully obvious that no matter what we do we aren't going to be completely safe, and what we're doing is not helping. But it is making us afraid. Always afraid. Do not think me callous or evil, this is a tragedy what has happened. I grieve for the families and friends of all the victims. But it was only 32 people who died. In 2005 over 43,000 people died in motor vehicle related deaths. Why are we suddenly so afraid of schools or people with guns but show almost no fear of climbing behind the wheel of a car? Less than one eighth of that 43,000 died almost six years ago on September 11th, and we are still afraid of the terrorists. We are still willing to give up our rights to protect ourselves from the terrorists.

We live in a State of Fear, to steal the title of a Michael Crichton book. We are controlled by our fear, we are consumed by it. It keeps us quiet and complacent while the very things that once made us Americans are slowly taken away. There is a uniquely American quote that we all heard in our history classes, but it seems to have faded from memory. Something said long ago by Patrick Henry. "Give me Liberty or give me death".

I will leave you with a quote from the book I mentioned before.

"The enemies of freedom are not the fringes and the radicals and the crazies or those who want to own guns. We are the enemy. Our fear is the enemy - our fear that would allow a couple of lunatic bombers at Oklahoma City to corner two hundred and fifty million of us with fear, in response to which and in exchange for the bald promise of protection, we are petitioned by the government to abdicate our freedom and renounce our sacred rights as free people. [...] Eternal vigilance is still the price of freedom, eternal vigilance, and today, more than ever, courage. For now, as always, it takes courage to remain free."